in all thoroughfares, and several saloons.  Their uniforms are very becoming, but rather short in the skirts; and their conversation is a catechism, for which and the answers I refer you to those who have heard it.

“I think of leaving town for Newstead soon.  If so, I shall not be remote from your recess, and (unless Mrs. M. detains you at home over the caudle-cup and a new cradle,) we will meet.  You shall come to me, or I to you, as you like it;—­but meet we will.  An invitation from Aston has reached me, but I do not think I shall go.  I have also heard of * * *—­I should like to see her again, for I have not met her for years; and though ’the light that ne’er can shine again’ is set, I do not know that ’one dear smile like those of old’ might not make me for a moment forget the ‘dulness’ of ‘life’s stream.’

“I am going to R * ’s to-night—­to one of those suppers which ‘_ought_ to be dinners.’  I have hardly seen her, and never _him_, since you set out.  I told you, you were the last link of that chain.  As for *, we have not syllabled one another’s names since.  The post will not permit me to continue my scrawl.  More anon.

     “Ever, dear Moore, &c.

“P.S.  Keep the Journal[35]; I care not what becomes of it; and if it has amused you I am glad that I kept it.  ‘Lara’ is finished, and I am copying him for my third vol., now collecting;—­but no separate publication.”

[Footnote 34:  In a few days after this, he sent me a long rhyming epistle full of jokes and pleasantries upon every thing and every one around him, of which the following are the only parts producible:—­

    ’What say I?’—­not a syllable further in prose;
    I’m your man ‘of all measures,’ dear Tom,—­so, here goes! 
    Here goes, for a swim on the stream of old Time,
    On those buoyant supporters the bladders of rhyme. 
    If our weight breaks them down, and we sink in the flood,
    We are smother’d, at least, in respectable mud,
    Where the divers of bathos lie drown’d in a heap,
    And S * * ’s last paean has pillow’d his sleep;—­
    That ‘felo de se’ who, half drunk with his malmsey,
    Walk’d out of his depth and was lost in a calm sea,
    Singing ‘Glory to God’ in a spick-and-span stanza,
    The like (since Tom Sternhold was choked) never man saw.

“The papers have told you, no doubt, of the fusses,
The fetes, and the gapings to get at these Russes,—­
Of his Majesty’s suite, up from coachman to Hetman,—­
And what dignity decks the flat face of the great man. 
I saw him, last week, at two balls and a party,—­
For a prince, his demeanour was rather too hearty. 
You know, we are used to quite different graces,
* * * * *
The Czar’s look, I own, was much brighter and brisker,
But then he is sadly deficient in whisker;
And wore but a starless blue coat, and in kersey-
mere breeches whisk’d round in a waltz with the J * *,
Who, lovely as ever, seem’d just as delighted
With majesty’s presence as those she invited.”
]